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After the suprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress, almost unanimously, voted to declare war on Japan. This caused Germany and Italy to declare war on the US, and the US was now fully in WW2. -
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will forever be remebered as the day of infamy for American citizens. However, just a few hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese planes bombed and attacked American airfields and military bases in the Phillipines.
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The early stages of war in the Pacific were bad for the US. Battles were lost and unsuspecting troops were attacked. This was a gloomy period of the war.
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The Bataan death march began after months of fighting at Bataan. An American defeat led to the capture of the soldiers who were forced to march for 65 miles to a Japanese prison camp. The prisoners were treated terribly and given barely any food or water, and were killed if they tried to step out of line. This was not a good sign for Americans back home.
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On this day, long range, high altitude American B-25 bombers took off from an aircraft carrier and bombed the city of Tokyo, greatly damaging it and starting fires that burnt down large portions of the city. This was a show of power from the US to remind Japan who they were.
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The Battle of the Coral Sea was a very important US victory. They stopped a massive Japanese attack on New Guinea, damaging much of their navy. This was also the first time that an attack of theirs had been shot down in WW2. The US now had won its first battle in the Pacific.
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The battle of Midway was the turning point of the war in the Pacific. The Japanese fleet lost this battle trying to take the island of Midway, and their fleet was badly damaged in the process. The fleet lost 4 of its aircraft carriers, the heart of its fleet. This greatly weakened Japanese power in the sea, and allowed Americans to begin the campaign to liberate the countries taken by Japan.
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The Americans launched their island-hopping campaign, which involved recapturing all of Japan's stolen land, going island to island. The plan was to do this all the way through mainland Japan, but was cancelled due to the atomic bombings.
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The war came to an end after America dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The raw power of the bombs and their radioactivity killed almost 200,000 people, making it the two largest and deadliest bombs in humanity's history. The radioactive affects still kill people to this day that survived the bombings. However, just a few days after the bombings, Japan surrendered, and the war was over.